Hundreds of thousands of mobile applications (or “Apps”) are currently available in web sources (repositories), such as the AppStore®, Google Play® and the like. Through such web sources, several discovery tools exist to assist a user seeking to download a mobile application. Such tools maybe a constructed search bar, a categorized menu or classifiers. The classifiers may be, for example, most popular, newest, paid, free, and so on.
Developers, distributors, and/or owners of applications are interested in measuring and tracking their mobile applications' attribution. Typically, attribution is the measurement of user events as a result of marketing activity. An event can be a download of an application, an installation of an application, repeating an application launch, an in-application purchase, and so on. With regard to download attribution there is an interest in identifying the path (or source) which led to the download of a particular application and applications similar to a given application for example, an application of a certain developer as well as competitors' applications.
Every mobile application marketer or developer seeks to measure the effectiveness of their applications. However, the download attribution is a unique problem for mobile applications as there is no standard tracking methodology. In addition, web repositories for downloading applications are sometimes encrypted, which makes it difficult to identify the application download attribution.
It would be therefore advantageous to provide an efficient solution for identifying a mobile application download attribution.
As is well-known in the art, users may be given the option within privacy settings, or otherwise, to opt-in or opt-out of various features, such as the collection of browsing information, location information, or other information about a mobile device. For instance, during a configuration process, a user may be asked to specifically opt-in to the identification and collection of information relating to their mobile device. Similarly, the user may be required to specifically opt-in before information about their device is transmitted from the device to a remote server. Alternatively, a user may be provided an opportunity to opt-out of the identification and collection of information relating their device, or the transmission of information about their device to a remote server.